|
The second point is charity, beginning and origin of all virtues.
This charity upheld the higher powers of His soul in quietness,
and in a fruition of that very bliss which He now enjoys. And this
charity kept Him constantly uplifted to His Father in reverence,
in love, in adoration, in praise; with fervent prayers for the
needs of all men, and with an offering up of all His works to the
glory of His Father.
It was also this same charity that made Christ stoop with loving
faithfulness and kindness to the bodily and ghostly needs of all
men. And in this He gave an example to all men, teaching them by
His life how to live. He fed in ghostly wise with true and inward
teachings all those men who could understand them: and others from
without through the senses with signs and wonders. And sometimes
He fed them also with bodily food, as when they had followed Him
into the desert and were in need of it. He made the deaf hear and
the lame walk straight, and the blind see, and the dumb speak, and
cast forth devils from men. He raised up the dead; and this should
be understood both in a bodily and a ghostly way. Christ, our
Lover, has laboured for us from without and from within, with true
faithfulness. His charity we cannot fathom and understand, for it
flows out of the unfathomable fountain of the Holy Ghost, and
transcends all that creatures have ever experienced of charity;
for Christ was God and man in one Person.
And this is the second point: that is to say, charity.
|
The third point is patient endurance. We should mark this point
carefully, for it adorned Christ our Bridegroom during all His
life. For His sufferings began very early, as soon as He was born;
they began with poverty and cold. Then He was circumcised and shed
His blood; He was driven to a strange country; He served the lord
Joseph and His mother; He suffered hunger and thirst, shame and
contempt, the vile words and works of the Jews. He fasted, He
watched, and He was tempted by the devil. He was subject to all
men; He wandered from country to country, from town to town, with
much labour and great zeal, that He might preach the Gospel.
At last He was taken prisoner by the Jews, who were His enemies,
though He was their friend. He was betrayed, mocked and insulted,
scourged and buffetted, and condemned by false witness. He bore
His cross with great pains up to the highest point of the land. He
was stripped stark naked. So fair a body neither man nor woman
ever saw so cruelly ill-used. He suffered shame, and anguish, and
cold, before all the world: for He was naked, and it was cold, and
a searching wind cut into His wounds. He was nailed to the wood of
the cross with blunt nails, and so stretched out that His veins
were torn asunder. He was lifted up and then flung down, and
because of the blow His wounds began to bleed again. His head was
crowned with thorns; His ears heard the Jews cry in their fury:
Crucify Him, Crucify Him, with many other infamous words. His eyes
saw the hardness and malice of the Jews, and the anguish of His
mother. And His eyes overflowed with the bitterness of sorrow and
death; His nose smelt the filth which the Jews spat out of their
mouths into His face; His mouth and tongue dripped with vinegar
mingled with gall, and every sensitive part of His body had been
wounded by the scourge.
Christ our Bridegroom, wounded to the death, forsaken of God and
of all creatures, dying on the cross, hanging like a log for which
no one cared, save Mary, His poor mother, who could not help Him!
Christ also suffered spiritually, in His soul, because of the
hardened hearts of the Jews and of those who were putting Him to
death; for whatever signs and wonders they saw, they remained in
their wickedness. And He suffered because of their corruption and
because of the vengeance for His death; for He knew that God would
avenge it on them, body and soul. Also He suffered from the
distress and anguish of His mother and His disciples, who were in
great affliction. And He suffered still more, because His death
would be of no profit to so many men, and because of the
ingratitude of man and because of the false oaths which many would
swear, reviling and blaspheming Him Who had died out of love for
us all.
And also His bodily nature and His lower reason suffered,
because God had withdrawn the inflow of His grace and of His
consolations, and had left them alone in such distress. And of
this Christ complained, exclaiming: My God, My God, why hast Thou
forsaken Me? But as to all His sufferings our Lover was silent;
and cried to His Father saying: Father, forgive them; for they
know not what they do. And Christ was heard of His Father because
of His reverence; for those who acted from ignorance were soon
afterwards converted.
These then were Christ's inward virtues: humility, charity, and
patient endurance. These three virtues Christ our Bridegroom
practised during all His life, and He died with them, and paid our
debt according to justice. And of His generosity He has opened His
side. Thence flow forth the rivers of well-being and the
sacraments of bliss. And He has ascended in power, and sits at the
right hand of the Father, and reigns in eternity.
This is the first coming of our Bridegroom, and it is wholly past. |